"He is not dead, madam: but you must be very gentle with him, if we are to—"
Tom saw that there was little hope.
"I will do anything,—only save him!—save him! Mr. Thurnall, till I have atoned for all."
"You have little enough to atone for, madam," said Tom, as he busied himself about the sufferer. He saw that all would soon be over, and would have had Mrs. Vavasour withdraw: but she was so really good a nurse as long as she could control herself, that he could hardly spare her.
So they sat together by the sick-bed side, as the short hours passed into the long, and the long hours into the short again, and the October dawn began to shine through the shutterless window.
A weary eventless night it was, a night as of many years, as worse and worse grew the weak frame; and Tom looked alternately at the heaving chest, and shortening breath, and rattling throat, and then at the pale still face of the lady.
"Better she should sit by (thought he), and watch him till she is tired out. It will come on her the more gently, after all. He will die at sunrise, as so many die."
At last be began gently feeling for Elsley's pulse.
Her eye caught his movement, and she half sprang up; but at a gesture from him she sank quietly on her knees, holding her husband's hand in her own.
Elsley turned toward her once, ere the film of death had fallen, and looked her full in the face, with his beautiful eyes full of love. Then the eyes paled and faded; but still they sought for her painfully long after she had buried her head in the coverlet, unable to bear the sight.